Oil and gas prices have been increasingly burdensome for the American family as of late. An issue that has been brewing for well over a year has recently been exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unfortunately, little has been done to date by the Biden administration to lower these fuel prices that have seriously strained the wallets of Minnesotans, and American families across the country.
From his nominations of anti-energy officials to his increasingly restrictive policies against oil and gas development on federal lands, President Biden long ago set the stage for the price run-up we are seeing today. The cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline on Day 1 of his presidency meanwhile, in part due to pressure by environmental activists who alleged the Canadian oil it was supported to transport was too dirty, is indicative of how this administration has been shaping its energy policy.
Now with gas prices hovering around $5 per gallon nationally, and $4.75 here in Minnesota, reality has set in for the Biden administration and they are changing their tune. Energy shortages across the world have led the Biden administration to look for oil in places such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, that same “dirty” Canadian oil is now finding its way into the U.S. via other modes of transportation, such as freight rail.
It is surprising that an administration that speaks out frequently about carbon footprints and claims to be serious about minimizing the environmental risks of oil and gas spills has been so quiet about this development. Freight rail, while an important complement to pipelines for energy transportation, should be a less preferred way to move oil and gas for the Biden administration because it is a more carbon-intensive and accident-prone mode of transportation.
These facts, coupled with the strong antitrust bent the Federal Trade Commission has recently taken under its new Chair Lina Khan, makes it all the more baffling that the Biden administration has not spoken out about the proposed Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern railroad mega-merger and that the Surface Transportation Board may push it through without proper oversight.
This merger would double rail traffic through residential areas and likely mean more oil running on trains through the neighborhoods and backyards of Minnesotans, rather than underground in safer pipelines. Given that rail is over four times more likely to experience an accident versus pipelines, according to one study, this would be an unnecessary risk. Further, the increase in intermodal truck activity going to and from these railyards will also increase risk of accidents and increase diesel emissions, directly contradicting the president’s push to lower carbon emissions.
A U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation review, meanwhile, found that busy at-grade train crossings “can have significant impacts on the quality of life in a community, and can hinder first responder’s timely access to emergency services.” In a Minnesota town like Winona, where train crossing wait times are already a problem with 40-minute delays in some cases, the 50 percent increase in train traffic this community is expected to see could be disastrous. The real-life devastating consequences of such delays were also recently on display in Lockland, Ohio, where a home — just 300 feet from the rails — sat in flames for eight times longer than it should have due to a train that was blocking firefighters from getting to the scene. A 59-second response time became eight minutes, with flames doubling with every passing minute.
[image_caption]Amy Koch[/image_caption]
Congress, for its part, funded a study regarding the impact longer trains have on safety, grade crossings, freight and passenger service, and the environment, as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill signed into law in November 2021 This is a good start, but more must be done. America has a clear option that would help it meet its energy needs and provide time for the full oversight this merger requires, but it is being ignored. The White House should give both a second look.
Amy Koch was the first female majority leader of the Minnesota Senate, where she represented Buffalo.
Ms. Koch is suggesting that pipelines are the safer way to transport oil than trains. She could also have said that solar and wind energy are even better alternatives. However, the implication of her suggestion is that Biden should do nothing to solve the gas price problem right now. There is oil in Canada, there are rail lines, there is demand in the US — right now. If we embark on building the right pipelines, relief is years away. And the infrastructure for a truly clean and safe delivery of energy is even farther into the future. Yes, transporting oil by rail is not a solution I like, either, but careful regulation and oversight can mitigate the dangers. Do you agree, Ms. Koch?
No one but the rail line CEOs want today’s excessively long trains, they are a safety risk and decrease employment opportunities to boot. Of course, they exist largely because of massive Western state coal shipments to coal burning electrical plants.
As for the claim that Canadian tar sands are the culprit, I see no data on how much dirty oil is supposedly involved. But at least the author did not categorically blame Biden for the increased cost of oil and gas (world-wide), since that is plainly insupportable and the author has some regard for her credibility.
Canadian tar sands plutocrats, however, always find a willing and eager audience in American “conservatives”. I for one believe we should tell Canada to build their own tar sands pipeline to their own coast. If Canadians don’t want to do that, that should be the end of the story. Canadians can build refineries of their own as well. Our oil plutocrats have concluded we have enough of them.
Conserve!
The Biden administration has only affected the oil and gas supplies in a negative manner. Why is that a surprise to anybody? So everybody pays more due the decisions made to stop pipelines, drilling etc.
Biden approved more oil drilling leases his first year in office than Trump did his first year.
In a survey of Texas oil and gas producers by the Fed, the #1 reason (by far!) that they weren’t drilling more was investor pressure for “capital discipline”. I.E. preserving capital by not investing in new wells. https://www.barrons.com/articles/texas-survey-shows-why-oil-producers-arent-drilling-more-51648145290
Over half the onshore acreage that has been leased to oil and gas companies remain unused by them.
Facts are stubborn things.
The Biden administration has been approving MORE leases for drilling than the prior administration – https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/06/biden-is-approving-more-oil-gas-drilling-permits-public-lands-than-trump-analysis-finds/
But don’t let facts get in the way of your narrative.
The reason gas prices have been so high is there’s more demand than refining capacity and it’s happening all over the world. There’s not much a president can do about that. If you want prices to drop, then economics tells you how to accomplish that: Drive less. Fly less. Do the things that allow you to use less oil.
Thanks to you both for this info. Unfortunately, facts cannot alter this “conservative” narrative, which has now become entrenched in the minds of the propagandized. Indeed, additional facts will even further cement the position.
Democrat party donor ($254,000 in 2020) Warren Buffett owns BNSF Railway Company, North America’s largest railroad. BNSF operates more than 32,500 miles of track in 28 states and three Canadian provinces.
And the company he runs and is the largest shareholder of, Berkshire Hathaway, donates more to Republican candidates than Democratic candidates.
[Google]
“Who owns most of the railroad in the United States?
BNSF, for example, is 46 percent owned by Wall Street investment funds. At CSX, the figure is 35 percent; at Union Pacific, 34 percent; at Kansas City Southern, 33 percent; and at Norfolk Southern, 32 percent, according to Bloomberg News.”
So I guess Berkshire Hathaway does not, in fact, own BNSF.
Private equity should not be thought of as “Democratic Party donors.”
More accuracy = more respect.
…
These “conservatives” are repeatedly burned by the ceaseless propaganda of the Rightwing Noise Machine, but it seems not to matter to them. As in, facts don’t matter, and certainly not factual errors!
“Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC is the parent company of the BNSF Railway (formerly the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway). The company is an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, which is controlled by investor Warren Buffett.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_Northern_Santa_Fe,_LLC
[Google again]
“People also ask
Can I buy BNSF stock?
Research the publicly traded railroads and select which companies in which to invest. Class 1 railroads Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (NYSE: BNI), CSX Corporation (NYSE: CSX) and Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) are available for public trade, among other major competitors in the industry.”
hmmm.
Berskshire Hathaway owns the railroad, not Buffett. You might want to try harder next time.
And if Ms Koch’s lobbying firm had a contract with rail freight companies she would be painting a rosy future for oil trains and environmental apocalypse for more pipelines.
It’s not what she believes, it is who will pay her. Wake up and smell the petroleum distillates…
“has recently been exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine”
Ya think?
And, poor Amy, wrote this piece just as prices have declined for 30 straight days and could not let a false narrative go unused:
“Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the gas price tracking website GasBuddy.com, said prices are likely to fall further. “Barring any unexpected refinery issues, hurricanes, and geopolitical changes, we could see the national average fall under $4 per gallon by mid-August,” he said in an email.”
And, it would be nice if MINNPOST would have included that Amy is a paid lobbyist for Hylden Advocacy and Law, led by Nancy Hylden:
“After working as a chemist at an oil refinery and then a power company for a time, she became involved in regulatory and environmental affairs, and soon after, left the laboratory entirely to become a lobbyist. She served as the Health and Energy Policy Director for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, and subsequently became a contract lobbyist at a Minneapolis law firm”
The endless Keystone Pipeline ranting is meaningless: It was years away from completion and having any impact whatsoever, but I guess you do need to advocate for your paymaster…
Considering her history, Amy Koch has a very long way to go before people, other than GOP fawners, will give her comments any credence.
Absolutely. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Why is a Amy a “former” member of the Minnesota State Senate? Because she had an affair with a staffer and repeatedly lied about it:
“After calling Koch a “classy lady,” Rosenbaum asked: “Was it a mistake on her part to lead people to believe on Thursday that she was resigning because she was going to be a lame-duck senator, and more than that, there was some talk about an illness her mother had and other things? Wouldn’t she simply have been wiser to say — lessen the impact of yesterday’s story — if she’d said, ‘I’m resigning for personal reasons?’”
https://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2013/02/amy-koch-media-saga-who-did-what-and-when/
But, like most politicians, she has landed on her feet and presses on from a new side of the public trough as a paid lobbyist and even now still has problems with being fully truthful. The more things change, the more they stay the same…
Oh please Amy, tell us why your friends the Koch’s and other oil oligarchs had to drastically increase profit margins on refined crude from wells they own or crude purchased on long term contracts. They have an effective monopoly and they use OPEC prices for “legal” price fixing. They are shrewd business people who protect their crude supplies and crude costs. Profits are soaring! Is it just greed or designed to help trump get re-elected and more tax welfare and no regulations. Amy Koch never met a oligarch or white supremacist she didn’t like.
I think reading about different views is a good thing, but this article was filled with misinformation…so why did they print it? I expect this on Fox, not a reputable media outlet.
Even if Biden hadn’t cancelled that pipeline…it still wouldn’t be available for several years, not to mention, this pipeline was to transfer this horrifically dirty oil to the gulf, refined and sent to Asia.
The world has higher gas prices and inflation than us…but repubs want to blame Biden…not themselves who have exasperated this system with their love for their fossil fuel baron donors.
Instead of printing her deceit, this media outlet should have printed a rebuttal to this kind of deceit…not providing a platform for repub propaganda
It is an opinion piece, published in the opinion section. No matter how fact free and misguided her opinions are. It is to MINNPOST’S credit that they do not require echo chamber only pieces like what is found in countless right side web content. From Alex Jones to Steven K Bannon to our local echo masters at the CAE and Powerline, John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson, if you not in alignment with their group think, just go away and stay away.
Items like this are great for a robust comments section and could be greatly enhanced if she were to respond to the several valid counterpoints presented here. Not likely, as we know Ms Koch has had past affairs with pure right wing partisanship:
“As public embarrassments go, few in recent memory have generated the level of ridicule that accompanied the saga of Michael Brodkorb, the political operative who was the creator of the semi-legendary website, Minnesota Democrats Exposed, and the embodiment of the modern, take-no-prisoners conservative attack dog.”
https://www.minnpost.com/media/2015/04/im-done-partisan-politics-qa-michael-brodkorb/
I’m concerned that MinnPost is following in the footsteps of traditional news organizations in that there is a need to present “balance” even when dreck like this is the best that can be found to provide that elusive commodity.
It’s a feature, not a bug. Ms Koch’s published drivel is evidence of the shallow minded weakness of the position she is trying to bring forward.
A disgraced former legislator, driven from office for bad behavior and lying about it, putting out a very dubious set of facts and still showing a problem with telling the truth about who she works for and how she gets paid, ain’t exactly a shining star of counterpoint excellence, but I guess that’s the best they got.
It almost makes me look forward to Isaac Orr’s next piece on the resurgence of clean coal.
Also last I heard the oil companies were sitting on something like 60% of the leases they’ve been given and not doing any drilling. Add in the fact that we’ve had comparatively high and higher oil prices per barrel in 2008 and 2012 but gas prices didn’t go as high, almost as if the oil companies are price gouging consumers with a dual goal of making a ton of profit while also hurting democrats and giving the GOP a talking point they can hammer on.
“From his nominations of anti-energy officials…”
What are anti-energy officials? Proponents of entropy? Lethargy?
In other news, gas prices have fallen for 5 weeks in a row. Some analysts predict $3.99 by mid august (vs 4.51 today).
Do Repubs have a new strategy ready if this trend continues? More critically, do they have any response to or strategy for the increasingly obvious impacts of climate change? Or just a continued insistence that fossil fuels have nothing to do with it?
WOW! MinnPost actually allowed someone to say something negative about “the big guy?”
Of course – Trump was condemned for showing up in the Middle East. Now “fist pump Biden” goes and begs for oil and is given a pass on the environmental loving pages of MinnPost.
I don’t recall what the supposed “condemnation” of Trump was on his Saudi visit, but I do recall some mockery of him mishandling a sword or something or trying to dance with some Saudis, just as Biden is being mocked (condemned?) for his fist bump with the murderous crown prince. Just as you are doing.
One man’s mockery is another man’s condemnation, I guess! But keep up the diligent watch for lib’rul hypocrisy, it certainly is a mortal sin by them!
Ron has just taken on the thin skinned nature of the former President. Plenty to find fault in both President’s relationships with Saudi Arabia. Of course Joe has a lot of groveling to do if he wants to match DJTs 2 billion dollar scam for Jared. Poor Hunter is such a scamming failure compared to his Trumpian peers.
From what I’ve read Wall Street threw a lot of money at the North Dakota oil fields and were not making sufficient money for the inputs. They withdrew some of their resources.
These facts were verified today by Krugman. You guys should do a story on the impact of the decline of fracking has had on the Mn suppliers of material and expertise. Also Fargo is part of Minnesota (just kidding on that one).
It would have been much better to simply write “Conservatives have no clue how an economy works”.
At any rate, for decades the only energy “policy” Republicans had was to deny climate change, cut taxes, and outlaw abortion. It’s kind of funny to see them trying to label someone else’s policies as: “dubious”. And no, ethanol was not a climate policy, it’s a subsidy for farmers.
Let’s recap: First Republicans we’re all-in on gas and oil because there was as no such thing as climate change, then they were all-in because climate change wasn’t caused by oil and gas, and now they’re all in because the price of oil and gas is spiking. Ever changing rationals for the same duplicity.
It’s curious that rises in prices are attributed to Democrat bumbling, but decreases in prices are always due to “market forces” that apparently only work when prices are declining. I’m not an economist, but I’m suspicious of economy-wide factors that only work in one direction.
I sort of agree with Ms. Koch at least share her wonder on why the Biden administration, through the Federal Trade Commission or Department of Justice, hasn’t opposed this and other railroad mergers. But I did a little online research and learned that the CP-Kansas Southern Railroad merger still is undergoing environmental review. Her concerns about the environmental impacts of increased transportation of oil over pipelines can and undoubtedly will be addressed in the environmental impact statement. So her comments about the Biden administration “turning a blind eye” are simply untrue.
Just as are many of the other “concerns” Ms. Koch raises. The US has no shortage of oil or petroleum pipelines or of refinery capacity. As of the end of 2021, there are 1,656,353 miles of oil and gas pipelines in the US. (Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics). Most,if not all, of these are are owned or controlled by the multinational megacorporations which own or control the petroleum reserves and the refinery capacity as well. The petroleum business has been a monopolistic (or oligopolistic which amounts to the same thing) business since its inception so it should be no surprise that these companies are earning record profits at the same time they are charging high prices at the gas pump. But not just there. Petroleum and petrochemicals pervade every facet of American life, from food to clothes, the water we drink and the air we breathe. Inflation has many causes but I’d bet a major one of these is the power of the petroleum industry over the price of oil and gas. There certainly is no “competition” that would limit this control. Of course, as a lobbyist for one or more of these petroleum businesses, Ms. Koch won’t or can’t say anything about that control, those record profits and prices or the”environmental concerns” created by fossil fuels.
And now it appears that the industry has decided that it must also do all it can to throw national elections to Repubs.
Which is why the only possible answer to this current windfall profit scandal is regulation of the oil industry as a public utility. Its price changes must be approved in advance, and its profits limited. It is not a competitive industry and never has been, so “conservative” appeals to the benefits of the “free market” are groundless.
Read the headline – rolled my eyes. Got a little further – nearly went blind with uncontrollable rolling. Went back to the author – Amy Koch, Amy Koch, why do I know that name? Go to the bottom – OOOHHHH it’s YOUUUUU. Gah. No wonder my BS-meter went bonkers. Still towing the party line despite being ostracized. Trying to sneak back in and create a good name with them, eh? Because you know you can’t actually muster up some morals.
Huh, apparently politicos get to keep working after being forced from office in disgrace? Who knew? I guess it’s a sign of progress that a woman gets to be forgiven for sleeping around on her husband, so there’s that. Or was it breaking up someone else’s marriage, or sex for political favor? The predilection of Republican politicians to desultory behavior causes the recollection of individual instances of such behavior to blur with time, it seems…
Congratulations to diligent and historically aware MINNPOST readers for calling out Amy Koch for the deceitful hypocrite she is.
In most professions, a total and complete dereliction of duty results in a reckoning that it is time to move on to a new and different career. The Minnesota system of higher education, that she consistently failed to support as a State Senator, offers countless new career choices for her to pick from.
Pick one and go away…
A burning house with flames doubling every minute… it’s almost like a metaphor for something.
While a piece of rhetoric with half-truths and misdirection will never surprise me, the complete disregard for the future of our world and our well-being in the face of climate change always will.